Google and Microsoft Snap Up Googli.ng and Bi.ng Domains

[the_poet]

Google and Microsoft have become some of the first companies to take advantage of the new Nigerian top level domain .ng, each securing domain names to protect their brands.

Google has secured the googli.ng top level domain and Microsoft has registered bi.ng, the latter almost certainly registered to serve as a URL shortener.

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[Keith]

Seems ultra-expensive and carries strict guidelines. I see no upside to these hacks. It would be a shocker if either of these 2 companies ever marketed these in a serios manner!

 

[glaxxon]

I see no point going along this way. Too expensive for any domainer and with this kind of money a business can easily secure a better .com considering yearly costs.

 

[Archangel]

They like flashing their money around. Nothing more. It's like them telling us, "You use Charmin? We wipe with $100 bills!"

 

[Sparhawke]

Another ridiculously overpriced African extension...do these idiots setting the prices never learn? You make far more money by selling to the masses than you do by selling to a few select companies.

I wonder which company will forget that sex and computers and flights and that lot are not trademarkable (in the real world at least) and register them anyway, leaving the real people with scraps :p

 

[silentg]

They like flashing their money around. Nothing more. It's like them telling us, "You use Charmin? We wipe with $100 bills!"

They're just trying to protect their brand. They know that some TM squatter will register it if they don't.

 

[labrocca]

Another ridiculously overpriced African extension...do these idiots setting the prices never learn? You make far more money by selling to the masses than you do by selling to a few select companies.

I don't think the masses for buying these unknown extensions exist anymore.

 

[Archangel]

Obvious.

But why not LET squatters reg them?! lol Do you or anyone on God's green earth see an issue with them? Who'd wanna pay so much for a crap .ng just to risk a C&D?

They're just trying to protect their brand. They know that some TM squatter will register it if they don't.

 

[silentg]

Obvious.

But why not LET squatters reg them?! lol Do you or anyone on God's green earth see an issue with them? Who'd wanna pay so much for a crap .ng just to risk a C&D?

Those who register TM names in other gTLDs and cctlds.

 

[Archangel]

In my years @ this business, I've seen a lot of ppl who figured, "Wow, I'll register google.ki and sell it to Google!" So yeah, that's believable.

As for my other question, I think I answered myself in an earlier post: These companies have money to flush down the toilets.

Those who register TM names in other gTLDs and cctlds.

 

[Corey]

good on them I say

Cheers
Corey

 

[Sparhawke]

I don't think the masses for buying these unknown extensions exist anymore.

.ng would be a great domain hack extension though, it does have 18626 of them at least.

Obscure domains do best in this field, why kill off any potential at all instead of at least trying?

What does .co cost for a domain, $20?? (not overly high and not too little, just right)

All you have to do is see how many people have registered those and beat those facts over the heads of the idiots who came up with the pricing.

 

[kev]

The reg fee will come down dramatically. Kinda makes sense...set the bar high for companies who have money to burn. Then reduce the reg fee for the masses.

 

[Kate]

This could be the most legit thing coming out from Nigeria lately

 

[DomainOutlaw]

The reg fee will come down dramatically. Kinda makes sense...set the bar high for companies who have money to burn. Then reduce the reg fee for the masses.

This would be the "price skimming" marketing strategy :P

 

[tichnak]

I would certainly not underestimate Nigeria as an economy and .ng as an extension, this a country with 150 Mio. people a GDP growth of more then 10% and lots of potantial. The current policy of the registry is strange, however, you can get ANY .ng currently at 35K USD and it might well worth to buy.

 

[jmcc]

I don't think the masses for buying these unknown extensions exist anymore.

There's been a major shift since 2006 (the .eu fiasco). At least .me and .co had some unique selling propositions. The .me ccTLD killed .name as a player but .name really had difficulty with the evolution of the web and drift from gTLDs towards ccTLDs. The repackaging of .co as in some way representing "company" or "commercial" might have been good for some but the reality is that such a venture would be trading heavily on the fears of the brand protection market (These are the registrations of big brand companies that appear in all new TLDs). The .co ccTLD has got some growth but I would expect its growth to slow over the next twelve months.

The key things for ccTLDs are these:
Economy.
Is there a thriving economy? What is the size of the market and the income?

Connectivity.
What percentage of the population have internet access and how is that access quantified? (Dial-up/Broadband/Wifi etc).

Domain Footprints.
How many domain names are registered in the local ccTLD and what is the ccTLD to gTLD registrations ratio?

Distance of local languages from English.
This is a tricky one and it is the rock on which a lot of newbie domainers perish. Having a killer English language keyword domain in a TLD where nobody speaks English is not as good as having an English language keyword domain in a ccTLD where English is widely spoken.

I think that many of these recently launched gTLDs and repurposed ccTLDs benefited from a bubble mentality and this accounted for their growth. With .eu being the peak of the bubble, you can see it deflate with .mobi, .asia, .tel.

Regards...jmcc

---------- Post added at 07:49 PM ---------- Previous post was at 07:43 PM ----------

I would certainly not underestimate Nigeria as an economy and .ng as an extension, this a country with 150 Mio. people a GDP growth of more then 10% and lots of potantial. The current policy of the registry is strange, however, you can get ANY .ng currently at 35K USD and it might well worth to buy.

I don't think so. The metric of ccTLD domains to population (domains per thousand of population) is one of the most misleading ways of judging a ccTLD because it ignores the problem of some people owning more than one domain name and hundreds of thousands owning none. Some registries such as Eurid love to use it to make it appear that their ccTLDs are massive successes when the reality is quite different.

The ccTLD markets follow a different set of rules to gTLDs in that these ccTLD markets are far better delinated, are not global, are highly dependent on registry regulations (the change in .cn regulations demonstrate that point well) and are very sensitive to market conditions.

Regards...jmcc